Page 8 of Undeniably Corrupt

I’ve been called morally gray. Corrupt even. Except being corrupt is a matter of perspective. A matter of entitlement. A product of necessity and leverage. Only those who truly need something are corruptible, and only those who are desperate or possibly just evil seek to corrupt.

Maybe that’s why I’m able to live in the gray.

Not evil, but not good. Not corrupted but not corruptible. Broken but not breakable.

I didn’t do the creepy fuck thing and look Liora up. I wanted to. I did. I’d thought about Liora over the years. Anytime I’d return home to Maine or sometimes late at night when my mind wouldn’t settle, I’d wonder about her. She never had any social media, and unless I hacked her, I wasn’t going to get much.

I didn’t hack her, though. Some things are better left in the past.

But there she was. Angel. A name I gave her when we were just kids because that’s how she always looked to me. Like an angel.Myangel, when that was always the last thing she was allowed to be. I saw her enter the club, and for far too long, I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t want to see her up there, and I told myself I wasn’t going to watch her dance.

But I also couldn’t look away.

The moment she stepped onto that stage, I was glued to her. Her body has changed since I saw it last. Then again, she was just a teenager, and so was I. Now she’s every bit a woman with larger, fuller breasts and curvier hips. She danced, and I was a slave to her along with every other asshole in there.

And when that asshole—my asshole—went up to her and placed money in her thong, I was going to let it go. I really was. I knew I was set to ruin his life and figured if she was dancing, she needed the money. I don’t know any exotic dancers, but I can’t imagine it’s a job they take unless they have to.

Which got me thinking. Wondering.

What happened to you, Liora? How did you get here? Are you simply paying your way through school, or is there more to your story that I’ve missed in the ten years since I saw you last? Because her parents had plenty of money and always spent it on her, so her dancing for it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me.I’m not throwing shade. Hell, I commit a variety of felonies nightly and am in no place to judge anyone.

But I was dying to know. Curious for answers I’m not entitled to.

Then he requested her. And he teased her, practically calling her a whore, and I wasn’t going to let that stand. I wasn’t going to allow him to treat her that way. I certainly wasn’t going to let her dance on him and take off her bra to show him her perfect tits or make him hard. He’d fucked with enough of my people, and I was done.

Loomis and Keegan are on their way home from Florida, and tonight Tommy will more than get what’s coming to him.

As for me…

“Hey, man,” Mason answers my call as I sit back in my office chair and spin around so I can stare out at the Boston skyline. “What’s up? You coming over tonight after you get Loomis and Keegan from the airport?”

“Yeah. For a bit.” I release a silent breath. “This stays between us, okay?”

“Sure. Always.”

“I saw Liora.” I rub my jaw, scratching at the stubble already forming.

He’s silent for a long beat before he replies, “Liora? As in your high school girlfriend, Liora? Cassian’s sister? The bloody angel wings girl?”

“One and the same.” Except the only people who knew she was my girlfriend were my Boston friends and my parents. We hid it from everyone else, including my best friend and her brother, Cassian.

“Huh. Wild. Where’d you see her?”

“At the café on the corner of my building. She also dances at The Landing Strip.”

“How do you know she dances there?”

“I wasn’t following her,” I explain, noting the accusatoryand worried tone of his voice. “I was after Tommy Hardgrave to get access to his phone, and she was there dancing.”

“Shit. That’s a weird coincidence. Are you okay? Is she?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t know.”

“Understandable. It’s been a long time since Cassian died, and she was a girl who got under your skin.”

I swallow at that. At all of it.

“A lot can happen in people’s lives that we don’t know about,” he continues.